The development history of the Xinanjiang model was reviewed in this study. It was noted that we should re-understand the importance of the model as recent physically-based distributed hydrologic models were encountering theoretical bottleneck. In this paper, recent advances in model structure, theories and methods, application fields were introduced, and it was pointed that the Xinanjiang model is a developing model system. The presupposition for any innovations to this model is that the core theories of it should be remained, e.g., the excess storage conception and the statistical curve for describing the variable contribution area conception. We should pay more attention to hillslope experiments and findings, and field works, theoretical analysis and simula - tions are all important for further development of the Xinanjiang model, and all these three factors should be in concordance with each other.